The United States is built upon the peerless value of freedom of religion. So important is the freedom of belief, enshrined in the First Amendment, that it is the jewel in the crown of the Constitution.
It is also the first freedom would-be despots try to undermine.
This is especially true in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. One of the most serious consequences of this attack has been the mainstreaming of a supercharged contemporary Islamist antisemitism, which has spilled over to the U.S.
This virulent and sometimes violent antisemitism has become especially prevalent on college campuses across the country. The scenes have been deeply disturbing. As anti-Israel protests swept campuses last year, the lives of Jewish students and faculty members were disrupted, and their physical access to programs, facilities, classes, and libraries was blocked. The situation looks to be the same for this academic year, which began last month.
Unfortunately, this antisemitism largely has gone unpunished. In fact, a recent legal injunction confirmed this fact and acknowledged that Jews studying on campuses were denied basic religious freedom.
In the ruling, Judge Mark Scarsi of the U.S. District Court in the Central District of California slapped down the University of California, Los Angeles for violating the freedoms of Jewish students. They were enrolled as students at the UCLA campuses, yet actively denied access to programs, classes, and university facilities that were otherwise accessible to students adhering to other religions.
This is the first such ruling against an American university since the war began. It sets a critically important precedent each one must now heed.
Scarsi’s injunction documents that, at UCLA, Jewish students were excluded from parts of the campus because of their faith.
“This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Scarsi wrote.
There are other signs of hope. Recently, a 22-year-old Cornell University student protester who called for violence online, including the death and mass murder of Jewish students at Cornell, was sentenced by the Northern District Attorney of New York to prison and will be serving a 21-month sentence.
The court ruled that these online threats were hate crimes, and the student was also sentenced to a three-year post-incarceration supervised release, which includes no contact with Cornell University, mental health treatment, and comprehensive restrictions and monitoring of his electronic devices and internet use.
U.S. policymakers must also stand up for Jews’ rights. They can do so by creating a new religious freedom commission, modeled after the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, an internationally respected commission devoted to defending religious freedom overseas.
The nine bipartisan-appointed commissioners assess international violations of religious beliefs, denial of religious rights, and sometimes even crimes against humanity in the name of religicide around the world. Their observations inform recommendations to the State Department. When egregious offenses occur, the commission identifies states as Countries of Particular Concern.
No such domestic commission exists. The current violation of the rights of America’s Jews warrants such action. It is what the creators of the Constitution would enforce.